Florida delegate question unsettled

Some call the complaints a publicity stunt. Others argue there’s a legitimate issue at work.

Either way, the debate over whether Florida is actually a winner-take-all state or should have its delegates doled out proportionally is lingering long after the ballots have been counted there.

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“I’m concerned about it,” said Bill McCollum, Florida’s former attorney general who led Newt Gingrich’s effort in the state, and who is part of a campaign effort to try to challenge the Florida rules. “It’s a material thing for [Gingrich’s] side.”

At issue is whether Florida, which saw its 99 delegates halved when it jumped the calendar to compete in January, is now a proportional state under the Republican National Committee rules because it voted early. It’s a question that the state’s Republican Party considers settled — a position the RNC has agreed with. The state filed a winner-take-all plan, and the RNC approved it.

The situation represents the first real hiccup that RNC chairman Reince Priebus, a no-drama chairman who has been focused on erasing the party’s debt, has contended with.

The national party’s former chairman, Michael Steele, has argued vociferously that the rules written for the 2012 convention make clear the state is supposed to be proportional. But the problem, current RNC members and Florida officials say, is that the rules don’t make clear what happens if a state breaks the rules twice — which is basically what Florida did.

“They violated two rules and there was no double set of sanctions,” said Phyllis Woods, an RNC committeewoman from New Hampshire. “You try to write the rules so they’re iron-clad, but then somebody does something you didn’t anticipate.”

Gingrich’s campaign has already filed a letter of complaint, an act that’s essentially for show at this point, because nothing can actually be done until close to the August convention. Gingrich, who had said prior to his lopsided loss to Mitt Romney that he wasn’t planning to challenge the Florida rule, also has yet to file his own delegate slate for the state.

By that time, Romney backers — and some neutral Republicans — believe the race will be essentially over, and the battle over a handful of delegates would be an irrelevant sideshow. If Romney is the likely nominee heading into the convention, he’ll have great sway over the party, and any challenges would likely get beaten back.

If it’s a tight race, and Gingrich somehow manages a massive comeback — a fact that’s looking less and less likely — then the argument could matter. The same holds true if Rick Santorum becomes a conservative alternative around whom the party’s right wing coalesces.